Bit of turmoil over at OpenAI over the weekend with the two bosses of the "Superalignment" (they tried to predict the ramifications of when/if AI becomes smarter than us) team quit. Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike posted on X very bland, non-descript resignation messages, but Jan has complained in the past that OpenAI's "safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products". Those bland messages seem to be deliberate because OpenAI makes all employees that sign an "extremely restrictive off-boarding agreement that contains nondisclosure and non-disparagement provisions former OpenAI employees are subject to. It forbids them, for the rest of their lives, from criticizing their former employer. Even acknowledging that the NDA exists is a violation of it". That's some serious cult type shit.
PC Mag noticed in Microsoft's 2024 Sustainability Report that their CO2 emissions rose by 29% and water usage went up by 23% compared to 12 months ago - both bad things to be doing during a climate crisis and bucks the trend of other megatech companies trying their hardest to greenwash (*cough* Apple *cough*) the impacts of their operations on the environment. The reason Microsoft gives for the huge increase is "new technologies, including generative AI" and the Economist notes that the bulk of the increase is from "indirect (Scope 3) emissions last year from building more data centres (including the carbon found in construction materials) as well as from semiconductors, servers and racks", not so much the computers running the AI models themselves. Is all this consumption for AI really worth it though?
I sat on this for a few days hoping for more info from Apple or someone smarter than me, but people keep reporting that after updating their iPhones to iOS 17.5, photos they've deleted are reappearing. You may have heard it took place on a device that was wiped, removed from an iCloud account and sold to another person, but the person that made that claim on Reddit has since deleted their post - so I would take that with a grain of salt. What does seem to be happening more commonly however are problems with iCloud Photos and deleted photos reappearing for the same user on the same device. That still sucks and shouldn't be happening in 2024 on such an established system, but it's at least somewhat explainable compared to a magic SSD file recovery scheme and kinda on-trend for iCloud being a bit shit at internet sync.
iFixIt got its hands on some LPCAMM2 memory. What the fuck is LPCAMM2 memory? It's a new user-replaceable RAM form-factor that's designed to go into thin laptops where an SO-DIMM slot is just too fat to fit (I know that feeling), as an alternative to soldering the RAM on the mainboard. The article explains that LPDDR RAM kinda needs to be soldered on because "the lower voltage makes signal integrity between the memory and processor challenging, requiring tighter tolerances and shorter trace distances — that is, the farther the signal has to travel, the more voltage you need for a reliable signal", which is at odds with lower power consumption. Being non-upgradeable bit is just a bonus for the OEM. It's still unknown of LPCAMM2 will take off, but I can see someone like Framework getting in on it sooner rather than later.
Die Hackerbibel - Teil 2 (retroGfx / Internet Archive)
📻 Videosynthetic - Jaded Truth
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